Mark Zuckerberg made some unfiltered comments in court today as he defended the possession of virtual reality technology his company was accused of stealing.
The New York Times was on the scene, capturing the Facebook CEO’s strongly worded argument. Zuckerberg didn’t hold back against his opponent.
“It’s pretty common when you announce a big deal that people just come out of the woodwork and claim they own some part of the deal,” Zuckerberg told the court after being called as a witness. “The idea that Oculus products are based on someone else’s technology is just wrong.”
Back in 2014, ZeniMax Media sued VR-startup Oculus for giving away trade secrets to its new holding company Facebook. The company says one of its former employees, legendary game developer John Carmack, shared ZeniMax’s VR technology with Oculus founder Palmer Luckey before joining the team himself.
ZeniMax, which owns iconic game developers id Software (Doom, Quake) and Bethesda (Fallout, Dishonered), are accusing Zuckerberg of rushing the $2 billion purchase of Oculus in 2014 to avoid looking into any wrongdoing.
The 32-year-old entrepreneur ditched his hoodie-and-jeans attire and relaxed attitude for a spiffy suit and sharp tongue.
“Like most people in the court, I’ve never even heard of ZeniMax before,” Zuckerberg said, according to Gizmodo. “I know that our legal team would look into this and examine but they aren’t going to take a lot of my time on something they don’t think is credible.”
Zuckerberg wasn’t the only one on the offensive. ZeniMax lawyer Toni Sammi questioned the time it took for Facebook to complete the purchase of Oculus. According to emails between the Facebook CEO and the company’s vice president of corporate development, Zuckerberg pushed to have the multi-billion dollar purchase completed in just two days.
Facebook faces $2 billion dollars in damages if found guilty. Luckey and Oculus’ former CEO will testify later this week.
H/T Gizmodo
